Keep Your Eyes Open

The Laboratory

We treaded carefully through the corridors of the laboratory, careful not to make to much noise.

"Tab, where do you think it'll be?" Vaseva asked from behind me.

"Follow the destruction, it must have a starting point, and I think it might be near her office," I answered.

"Right, got it," Vaseva whispered. I looked around the corridor; the lights flickered on and off, on and off, on and off; blood streaked the floor and the walls in a rather artistic fashion; bodies with massive, gaping holes littered the corridor; doors hung on their hinges at slanted angles; papers with big, red pacthes on them were scattered at random; footprints of the dead. I looked down at the closest footprint to me, it was a big foot - size nine probably -, it was a mixture of mud and blood. I begun then to think about who made it, or what made it, and when. As we walked further down, the destruction only got worse. The bodies became more frequent and I started to question just how many people were dead. I shivered as I saw a bloody hole in a man's chest where his heart was ripped out. Sharp, broken ribs protruded from the left hand side, the way they were broken suggested they were snapped off in a mad rush to get to the treasure. I wanted to look closer, I wanted to discover just how the creatures did it, but out of respect I didn't.

"Tabitha, come look at this," Lennon called from ahead of me, I looked away from the dead to face him and noticed he was pointing to a door. I jogged up and read the label. Natasha Ross.

"Yes, this is what we need," I said nodding. I tried to open the door but it was locked. I rammed my shoulder into the door, but nothing happened.

"Stand aside peasant," Rhys said, pushing me out of the way.  He kicked the door and it opened. "Ha!" He strode in confidently. Natasha's desk was a mess, papers were strewn across it and pens were left at odd angles. Her computer sat in the middle of all this chaos, its leads were still plugged in. I rushed over and turned it on; I breathed out when it loaded up. I sat on her seat and looked around.

She was sat here when she made the password, I thought. Directly in front of me was the door, but then to the left of that was a picture of Natasha and her family, two sons and a daughter stood either side of Natasha and what I thought was he husband. I rummage through the papers, hoping to find some sort of school report of family documents of some sort. After finding nothing, I open the top drawer. Right on top was a folder marked 'School'. Brilliant, exactly what I need. The rest of the group stood around the desk, watching on with interest. I opened up the school reports and tried the school name as the password; no luck. I scanned through the papers and found out Natasha's children were Andrew, Sam, and Ellie. I tried every variation of all their names and still no luck. I disregarded the thought of her putting her family as her password.

It suddenly struck me. People would think that the most smartest of people will have an incredibly difficult password to guess, but Natasha seemed somewhat as a genius and enjoyed to trick the human mind.

I typed in 12345.

The desktop popped up on screen a few moments later. I smiled proudly.

"I'm in," I told the others and they all congratulated me. "Stand by the door, keep a look out, this may take a while."

It did take a while. Natasha had hundreds upon hundreds of documents and I checked every single one of them, some I disregarded immediately but others I kept open.

It was in the fourth hour that I found it; Her research and equation and antidote mixture, hidden in the deepest depths of her computer - it was on her desktop marked as 'Family Trip Dates'.

"Get me a pen and paper now!" I nearly yelled. Vaseva grabbed a sheet of lined paper and the nearest pen. I began writing down everything on the page in front of me. I noticed that Natasha had very kindly added where she put the antidote, and it was very helpfully in the fridge in her office. I finished writing everything down and rushed to the fridge. I spotted the antidote instantly, it was a horrible, murky green colour, but the problem was there was barely any left. "We need to figure out how to make this," I say holding up the test tube, "we have a lot of time, but yes, we've got it, we need to head back right now." They all nodded and didn't say a word as they all walked out of the office. I took my notes, the antidote, and a needle and followed my friends out of the laboratory.

As we arrived at the front doors, three zombies stood drunkenly, staring at us. I quickly took some antidote into the needle.

"Vaseva, hold this don't fight," I said quickly as I gave her the antidote. Lennon, Prasan and Rhys all launched forward and tackled the zombies, retracting every time the zombies tried to bite them. After a few minutes of intense struggle, they each had pinned down a zombie each. I rushed over and injected a tiny bit of the antidote into each of the three zombies. As I did, they all fell limp as my heart beat in my ears. Lennon, Prasan, and Rhys all got up and backed away. We stood there, watching in anticipation.

The change was slow at first, but we all saw it at the same time. Their strange skin tone started to fade back to white, and their blood shot, pale white eyes began to gain their original colours. We stared on in fascination as we could see their blood flowing back into their limbs. They sat up at the same time, holding their heads in their hands.

"Guys, we should go, like seriously," Lennon whispered, we all nodded and side-stepped the three. I could now clearly see that two were male and one was female. I couldn't see their faces.

We all clambered into the car and I begun to drive off again.

When we arrived back at the house, five zombies were already on our street.

"Run for it guys, grab the stuff later," Vaseva said as she readied herself by the door. "Three, two, one, go!" We opened our doors in a hurry and sprinted for the door, the zombies were already running towards us. When we reached the door, Harri opened it immediately and stepped outside, holding the door open for everyone and watched in fear at the zombies that were quickly advancing towards us. I arrived last and by that time, the zombies were less then a meter behind me. I could hear their  growling behind me and their ever-nearing footsteps.

"Come on Tabitha! You can make it!" Harri screamed from the door. I felt tears running down my cheeks as I made it to the door. Harri pushed me inside and was about to follow me when on of the zombies bit down on his arm.

Harri's cry made my blood run cold, the amount of fear and pain in his voice nearly made me break down into tears. Rhys was the one who saved Harri though, he pushed the zombie off Harri and pushed Harri into the corridor and then slammed he door shut. Harri lay on the floor, clutching his arm.

"Get.... get..."  I couldn't say it. I took a deep breath. "Get the tourniquet."